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The Bad News Bees -- Baffling disorder is decimating bee population
By Dustin Block
Journal Times
and the Associated Press
RAYMOND - It was a rough winter for Randy Chase's bees.
The Town of Raymond beekeeper lost 70 percent of his colonies to the undulating weather of the past three months, forcing him to order 45 new packages of bees from California to continue his hobby.
"To have something like this happen, there's concern for the industry as a whole," said Tim Fulton, a member of the Kenosha/Racine Beekeepers Association. "It's pretty much a mystery."
At the heart of the mystery is Colony Collapse Disorder, which is the name researchers have given to reports of bees disappearing from their hives, seemingly without cause. Twenty-one states, including Wisconsin, have reported incidents of CCD, which remains entirely unexplained.
But several local beekeepers echoed Fulton and expressed concern over the increasing number of threats to bee hives.
"Each year it gets a little more challenging to be a beekeeper," said Chase, who has raised bees for 17 years. "We have the small hive beetle and other parasites starting to show up in different parts of the country, and CCD has a lot of people worried. We don't know if it's biological, pesticides (or) air pollution that's causing this. There's been a whole host of theories out there."
Mark Lewis, a beekeeper in Caledonia, lost all three of his hives over the winter. While minor in the scheme of the national bee industry, which uses millions of hives to pollinate crops and raise honey, Lewis' experience points to the concerns of a massive loss of bees.
Lewis uses his bee hives - he's planning to replace his lost hives - to pollinate his small orchard and to collect a personal supply of honey. Without his bees, he loses the benefit to his fruit crop and has to look elsewhere for honey. On a national level, the loss of bees means higher prices for honey, fruit and nuts. The hardest hit group, at least so far, are the almond growers in California.
Almond crops
Beekeepers from around the country flock to the Golden State this time of year, releasing their insects to jump-start the $1.4 billion California almond crop.
Researchers trying to figure out CCD hope the diversity gives them a large sample from which to figure out why some bees remain healthy while others become afflicted with the disorder.
The expedition to California couldn't have come at a better time for researchers scrambling for answers. About half of the nation's available commercial bees are transported to California each February for the task, when trees burst with light pink-and-white blossoms.
Marsha Venable, spokeswoman for the Almond Board of California, which represents growers, said a group task force assigned to monitor the situation found that there was no bee shortage this year.
But bee researchers from Pennsylvania and Montana, who have spent the last couple weeks in California collecting test samples, said they have heard stories of beekeepers having lost colonies by the thousands, forcing them to return home with no work and few bees.
"One yard had colonies that were failing. One was one of the worst cases we've seen," University of Montana bee researcher Jerry Bromenshenk said in a phone interview on Monday. "That's why we are all focused in California at this point."
The first report of CCD came in to researchers at Penn State University in November, though scientists now think that the problem may have been around as early as a couple years ago - and it may not be limited to the United States.
German study
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported in 2005 that genetically modified crops may be responsible for bee deaths in the United States and Germany. In the study, conducted from 2001 to 2004, researchers discovered that bees who came into contact with a high dose of genetically altered corn were more susceptible to a parasite. Follow-up research on the findings have not been conducted, according to Der Spiegel.
In the United States, researchers are surveying beekeepers to determine the geographic extent of the problem. While there are no definitive answers, survey results so far show the first signs of the illness may have popped up in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Texas is the most recent state added to the list. Texas' hive numbers declined from 116,000 in 2004 to 84,000 in 2005, agriculture officials said. Some of the decline can be attributed to the disorder, said Paul Jackson, Texas' apiary inspector at Texas A&M University.
The worker bees leave the hive and never return, and without them the queen and larvae don't get cared for and the colony collapses, Jackson said.
"At this point they really don't know what the answer is," he said. "The bees are disappearing."
The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.
Cold weather
In Ohio, beekeepers are blaming a resurgent winter for taxing its honeybee population.
Bee expert James Tew said the cold could contribute to a 40 percent to 70 percent death rate.
"Bees just can't get a break," said Tew, a specialist at Ohio State University's Honeybee Laboratory in Wooster. "We were already facing a large bee kill because of a lack of stored food, and now this lengthy cold snap is endangering the rest of the hives. If the temperatures dip into the teens, the die-off will be even worse."
Tew said he worries about the effect on the estimated 4,000 backyard beekeepers, whose bees are responsible for much of the fruit and vegetable pollination. Farmers rely on honeybees to pollinate at least 70 crops in Ohio.
The cold weather hit after a warm spell that allowed the bees to lay eggs, gather food and make wax. The cold meant the bees couldn't leave their hives to get food.
"The bees were so focused on gathering food for their young and making wax that you could have walked naked into a hive and not been stung," said Kim Flottum of Medina, Ohio, editor of Bee Culture magazine. "The queen was laying eggs, it was exciting and then - boom, a kick in the face."
The bees will need the blossoms to survive the cold and provide the food they need to feed their young and pollinate the trees when spring weather returns, Tew said. The young bees will die if the blossoms are gone and then fewer will be around to pollinate cherry, plum and other fruit trees, hurting the crop.
The bee population already has been hurt by bees not storing enough food for the winter, Tew said. Some beekeepers found in the past few weeks that entire colonies had starved. Other bees have been affected by CCD. Nationwide, more than a quarter-million hives were found empty in March after bees abandoned them.
The disorder hasn't hit Ohio as hard as other states, but some beekeepers reported losing half of their hives.
"We've had scattered reports of colony collapse in Ohio, but not as many as we feared," Tew said. "Now, we're more concerned about the weather."
Ohio's apple crop should escape the effects of the cold snap because the trees don't bloom until early May. In a few weeks, beekeepers from the Southern United States are expected to arrive in the state to rent out their hives to orchards.
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